I have some really exciting news to share with outdoor enthusiasts around Vancouver today. There is an invaluable new tool to add to our arsenal of trip planning and information sharing. Ross Collicutt (www.PureOutside.com) has created a wiki for Vancouver and Vancouver Island outdoor nuts!

Below is a guest post from Ross on the new wiki:

Any time I need information about the outdoors on Vancouver Island or in Vancouver or anywhere in the world, I hop on to the internet. It’s speed for finding information about nearly anything is unmatched. There’s a problem though.

All this wonderful information is scattered across the internet. Some on large websites, some on small ones, some hidden in cryptic trip reports that rarely see public eye. PureOutside aims to change that.

How?

Well the first step was the blog. It helps. It’s good at listing the latest news and events and putting a bit of information about something online. But it’s for things that are in chronological order. We needed something better.

Enter the Outdoor Wiki.

You may not have heard of wiki’s before. Wikipedia is a wiki. It’s basically a website that anyone can add to or edit. Anyone can add things, edit things or delete things from Wikipedia. Same thing with the Outdoor Wiki. Anyone can use it. Anyone can add their information, their trip reports, their reviews. No special software involved. It’s all in the wiki.

But I don’t know how to program

The beauty of the wiki is that you don’t need to know how to program. All you need to know how to do is type. You can do that right? You’re half way there.

The first step is to head to the How-To page. This will give you some instructions on how to sign up and start adding content.

After you’re logged in, you can edit any page you want. Bear in mind that anything you put on there can be edited by anyone else. Be respectful to what you change and delete on the wiki or you might find your content gets edited as well. There won’t be much need to delete anything off the site though since we want to collect as much solid info about trails, lakes, mountains, outdoor activities and gear as we can pack in there.

The editing process is straightforward. Click edit at the top of the page where you want to add something. You will be taken to the edit page where you can type any text you like into the textbox. After you’ve made you changes, click save. You’re done!

Well, almost. One of the beauties of the wiki is how easy it is to link information together. When you want to create a new page or link to an existing page, simply put the page name in double square brackets. If you want to make a page called “Awesome Mountains to Climb in Vancouver” just write this on your page [[Awesome Mountains to Climb in Vancouver]]. Save that page and Voila! you have a link to your new page. Click on that link and get started writing good stuff about your Awesome Mountains.

Make it spiffy

There are a few other things you can do make your pages even better. We’ve got a test page set up so you can see examples of some things you can in the wiki.

Putting an asterisk (*) in front of a line makes one point in a bulleted list. Putting a pound sign (#) at the beginning of a line makes a numbered list. So this:

# Whistler
# Blackcomb
# Grouse

Will turn into after you save it:

1. Whistler
2. Blackcomb
3. Grouse

Cool eh?

You can use headings too. They’re just as easy to set up. Use the equals sign to make your headings (=). Put one equals sign on each side of your heading. Use one equals sign for the biggest, baddest heading. Use 2 for something not so big and bad. They go up to 5. So just write this to get a couple of headings

= My Heading Level 1 =

=== My Heading Level 3 ===

One point to remember with the headings is they get put into a table of contents at the top. If you’ve got a long page, you’ll want to separate them with headings so it will be easier to get around.

On your way

One last thing before you start adding all your favorite outdoor information to the wiki. Try to keep it organized. Search for a page before you add it. If it’s already there, just add to it. It will only get confusing if we all start adding duplicates of pages.

If you have any questions, comment on this post or email us at pureoutside@gmail.com. Hope to see your info on the wiki soon!

Ross
Most at home riding and running on the trails and mountains, Ross heads inside once and a while to stretch his mad coding skillz making websites like this one.

Ross has already plugged in a lot of info for the Island and I’m slowly cracking away at Vancouver. So far I have a lot of Outdoor Clubs and Outdoor Shops, and will slowly be working on the other sections.

The more people who use this tool, the better it becomes, so please share this new tool and contribute anything you can!

Also, I’d like to extend a big thanks to Ross who’s hard work has made this possible for everyone. This kind of information sharing and pooling of resources was one of the reasons I started this blog, so to see the new Pure Outside wiki is really inspiring!

I’ll have a permanent link dedicated to the wiki on the top of this blog so you can always find it from here (but make sure you bookmark it!)

Tags: PureOutside,Wiki
Categories: News, Website Updates
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Photo by Ruth and Dave in the Outdoor Vancouver Flickr pool.

Well, this site has been going for 2 years strong.

I’m at a total of 448 posts over the last two year (or an average of a 0.6 posts/ day). Not a ton of content, but hopefully helpful stuff.

Site traffic is (slowly, but) steadily increasing as the months go by. Google Analytics tells me I had about 56,000 visits and about 85,000 pageviews over the last year. I’m sure low numbers compared to a lot of other blogs, but for something sort of niche done in my spare time I’m pretty happy with the traffic.

I would just like to thank all the people who visit this site, comment, and share their awesome photography in the Flickr Group. It’s great to know when people are engaging with the content.

I’m slowly trying to make improvements, and with some great work done by Ross at Island Adventurer there will be a Wiki going live soon where we can all keep track of stores, events, trails, clubs, etc around Vancouver and elsewhere.

Have any feedback? Should I be posting more about anything specific? See a design flaw in the site? Put a comment below, or drop me an email, I’m always open to suggestions.

Cheers!

Tags: Blogoversary
Categories: Website Updates
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I was recently flipping through some of the pictures in the Outdoor Vancouver Flickr Group and have been utterly impressed by some (ok, ALL) of the shots in there. I thought I’d do a quick post to highlight a few of them, but make sure you check out the entire group.

I know a lot of them are Olympic related at the moment, and not necessarily ‘outdoorsy’, but who can complain? Thanks to everyone who contributes to the pool. Looking at some of the photos that have been added over the last year have really inspired me to get into photography and I was lucky enough to grab a dSLR a few months ago. I’m slowly trying to hone my beginner skills. So, I’d also like to thank those who have inspired me to take on a new hobby.

If you’d like to contribute (you don’t have to be a pro, submit any shots of your lastest outdoor trip and share your story) all you need to do is sign up for a free account on Flickr, then join the group.

Make you feel like getting outside or what?!

Tags: Flickr,Outdoors,Photography,Pics,Vancouver
Categories: Random or Unrelated, Website Updates
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The Olympics officially kick off tomorrow and I can’t wait. I was at Lonsdale Quay yesterday for the celebration as the torch did its tour around the North Shore, and can’t help but be overly excited for the games!

That said, I’ll be taking some time ‘off-line’ over the next two weeks so I can juggle work, family life, marathon training, soccer, prepping for CSC exam, and enjoying as much of the Olympic festivities as I can possibly soak in. I won’t be posting much, if anything, until March. (I will probably still keep up with the Sunday Links, because that’s quick and easy to do )

Aside from all the mainstream coverage of the games, there are some great local bloggers who you should definitely keep up with for great coverage. Masey has done all the work for me and listed the sites you need to check out for great Olympic coverage. Also, make sure you check out the Outdoor Vancouver Flickr pool, as some people have submitted some amazing Olympic-related shots.

Enjoy the games Vancouver, and I’ll be back in March

GO CANADA GO!

Tags: Olympics
Categories: Website Updates
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Well, its been a year since I started blogging and created Outdoor Vancouver. Here’s a look back at the beginning, the highlights, what I’ve learned, and what’s next!

Recap & Learnings

After searching the web for a Vancouver focused outdoors blog and not finding anything (besides one that hadn’t been updated in over a year), I thought it might be fun to start a website. I originally set the site up on Blogspot.com. I was learning to do everything as I went, and the site was pretty crude. I found that I was actually able to keep up with new posts frequently, and was not having any trouble finding stuff to write about. In fact, I don’t have enough time to write as much as I would like on Outdoor Vancouver. Seeing as I was enjoying running the site, and was actually getting a little traffic, I decided to fork out the money for web hosting and switched over to WordPress.org, and started the site as it exists today. There is still room for a lot of improvement, but gradually the site is growing.

Since April 30, 2008 I’ve written 256 posts or 0.7 / day.

I’ve learned a lot since starting Outdoor Vancouver. I find my subconscious mind is always thinking ‘hey, that would be a good thing to post about on the site’. Whether I’m hiking a new trail, going bungee jumping, or reading the newspaper, my mind seems to be taking notes about things to write about. Because of this, and the subsequent research on various topics, I’ve been able to learn quite a bit about different things going on around the city. I’ve also been inspired to try new activities, next on the list is rock climbing.

I’ve also learned that Vancouver has a pretty tight, friendly, & social blogging / social media community. This is one thing I had not considered at all when I started the blog, but has been one of the biggest highlights for me. I’ve ‘digitally’ met some really cool people, and discovered some cool blogs, that I otherwise probably wouldn’t have. People like @Tawcan, @Hummingbird604, @Seeking_balance, @VancityAllie, @TylerIngram, @Monicahamburg, and many more, who I’ve met by them commenting on this blog, me finding their blog, or via Twitter. I’ve also learned a lot from these people and their blogs, which has been great. They all have their own style, area of expertise and/ or quirkiness that makes reading their blogs both entertaining and a great learning experience.

I have yet to attend a Tweetup, Bloggers meetup, WordPress camp, Twestival, Northern Voice, Third Tuesday etc, etc, etc (I said they’re a social bunch) and I regret not having been more social myself. This is largely because I have just seen my son turn 1, and spending time with my family has been a priority over the last year. After work, I seldom have the chance to head out to these events, although I want to make more of an honest effort to get out in the future to some events and meet these people face to face.

Traffic

The picture is a snapshot of my daily traffic over the last year (since moving to WordPress in June). As you can see, things started off slow, but I’m now averaging about 100 – 130  visitors/ day. I have no idea if this is good or bad compared to other blogs, but I’m fairly happy with it (especially considered my theme is IE challenged, more on that to come).

Financials

When I started the site I was on Blogger.com but found it limited, and also read that self-hosting would help get traffic to the site because of a much higher Google search ranking. I ended up forking out $166.80 for 2 years of hosting with Dreamhost, and paid about $10 for the domain name = $93.40 for the first year (switched over in June) and that works out to $7.78/ month to run this site.

I do get a little bit of revenue from the Google Ads scattered around, and have also recently done 2 sponsored posts for $20 bucks (I know I’m a sell-out ). All told, in the first year I’ve earned $65 from Google Ads + $20 for the sponsored posts (I’ve also been mailed a few magazines, received a good discount on a camping knife, got a free survival kit and things like that), but earnings work out to $7.08 / month.

So I’m just below break-even in the first year. (Assuming my labor and many hours posting are worth nothing of course, but I obviously don’t do it for the large sums of money).

The Future

So why do I do it? Well, I guess because its fun. I enjoy it. It’s really cool when students in China have e-mailed me asking if they can use my snowboarding pictures for their school newspaper, when different groups ask if I will post about their upcoming event/ project, when people email me asking for hiking suggestions for their upcoming trip to Vancouver, and when people comment/ engage with my posts. It’s also great that I have a medium to get information I find interesting out to a receptive audience, for example posting about Holista foods (local company) ceasing to sell shark-cartilage capsules.

So I don’t have any big changes planned, just to keep plugging away. Getting back to the IE-challengedness of this site (alignment issues, not even working on certain versions) I plan to change themes at some point, but that is a big undertaking time-wise as I can’t remember all the mods I made to this one for various plugins and so forth. However, if I want the site to keep growing I figure I should stop alienating 39% of the people who visit the site. Switch to Firefox people!

Lastly (but not least), thanks to all the regular visitors, I appreciate all the comments and emails and hope you find this site useful!

Tags: 1st Anniversary
Categories: Website Updates
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